CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Korsten, Thijs |
|---|---|
| Title | Thinking the Caucasus After Bourdieu: Heteronomy and Heterogeneity in the Social Lives of Security Professionals in Georgia and Armenia |
| Summary | Both Georgia and Armenia have gone through cycles of elite turnover and violent conflict – from the post-Soviet upheavals of the 1990s, via the Rose and Velvet Revolutions of 2003 and 2018, to the wars of 2008 and 2020. Questions of security expertise, geopolitical positioning and responsibility for territorial loss are in both countries at the centre of political discourse. The security practices and struggles for legitimacy that elites and experts in Armenia and Georgia engage in, straddle the boundaries of the fields of security and politics. This social reality challenges ‘conventional’ Bourdieusian approaches in International Relations (IR) and Critical Security Studies (CSS). How can we make sense of the relationship between political competition and security expertise, if these two fields are not autonomous and institutionalised but entangled spaces? By drawing on post-Bourdieusian sociologists, this thesis pushes forward the use of Bourdieu’s work in IR/CSS by foregrounding the concepts of heteronomy and heterogeneity. Based on in-depth fieldwork interviews, I propose that the dual dynamic of the politicisation of security and the securitisation of politics in the South Caucasus can be conceived of as a heteronomous intersection. This heteronomous intersection exercises a structuring effect on the strategies of security professionals. In addition, I highlight the diversity of different habitus formations in the Armenian and Georgian security fields. The struggle over security knowledge in Georgia and Armenia is shaped by a triangular pattern of contestation between three groups – (post-)Soviet professionals-t urned-geopoliti cians, military diplomats and (diasporic) brokers, and post-post-Soviet security experts. |
| Supervisor | Kurowska, Xymena |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/korsten_thijs.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University